Signal Boost: Growing Compassion

I’ve posted before about how I’m study NVC (Nonviolent Communication, also known as Compassionate Communication) and how important it’s been for me. I actually see a lot of similarities in philosophy between clicker training and NVC, and I keep intending to write some posts on that topic, but I haven’t managed it yet.

Anyway, I got very involved in helping the organizer of an upcoming NVC telesummit, and now I’m really hoping some of my friends, readers, and others will want to attend because it looks like it will be an awesome event and it’s really fun to be on the phone with friends or people I know from online. It’s very accessible, too, for anyone who can use the phone (more about this at the bottom in my postscript).

For those who might want to participate in the calls — you do not have to know anything about NVC or have any experience with it. In fact, this is a great opportunity for people who haven’t studied NVC to learn from some of the most experienced and respected people in the field and get a large sampling of perspectives on a single topic: compassion.

BayNVC’s new telesummit is begining September 3rd. It’s called “Growing Compassion: Building on Interdependence.”

This month-long telesummit — available globally by telephone — will be led by 21 of the most exciting NVC trainers in the field. Each trainer will be sharing their wisdom of years of accumulated experience in compassionate communication and open-hearted connection.

Registration is open now. The Growing Compassion telesummit starts September 3. Not only will you be able to attend as many (or as few) calls as you want, but you will also receive recordings of all 20 calls! More information about this powerful and transformative event is below and here.

Growing Compassion: Building on Interdependence

If you want to experience the spark of global community forged by shared learning and compassion, join us!

Program Highlights

Opening Call: Practices for Opening our Hearts. BayNVC founder Miki Kashtan will offer tips based on her decades of study and work with thousands of people.

9/11 “Enemy Image” Call: During conflict, we often lose connection with the other person and see them only as a villain. Lisa Montana shows how the Enemy Image Process offers a simple way to defuse this dynamic, get support, and open the door to solutions that meet everybody’s needs.

Zen Wisdom for Naturalizing your Practice: Are you interested in ways to actually practice NVC out in the world, with natural language? Coming from his perspective of Zen Buddhism, Jesse Wiens answers the question, “How can I get off the cushion and out into the world and make a difference?”

Calls offered in French, Spanish, and Hebrew – open to ALL. Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, says about empathy, “It’s not the words!” Practice “wordless empathy” by experiencing the humanity of a person who speaks a different language than you do. Experience a heart-to-heart, personal connection which transcends words!

Dates and Times

All calls take place Monday through Friday, Noon to 1 PM Pacific Time (3 PM to 4 PM Eastern Time). Schedule of dates and trainers below. After registration, your call-in number, PIN, and further details about each call will be emailed to you!

Schedule: Presenters and Topics

Week 1 (September 3-7)

Monday: Miki Kashtan – Practices for Opening our hearts

Tuesday: Jesse Wiens – Out of the Workshop and into the World: Zen wisdom for “naturalizing” your NVC practice

Cost: This is a continuing effort to financially support BayNVC. Requested contribution: $60 (includes recordings of all calls). If you are living in the Global South or your financial circumstances preclude your participation, please email Mair Alight so that you can be included in this event.

- Sharon and Barnum, SD/SDiT

P.S. About various access issues:

I attended a much more intensive telesummit in July that was life-changing. I was so grateful I was able to attend 17 calls (!!) even though I was very sick. The trainers and most of the participants, too, were totally accepting and inclusive around my disability issues. For the previous teleconference when I was experiencing spasmodic dysphonia, sometimes I used TTY relay, sometimes speech-to-speech relay, and sometimes people understood me well enough without relay. I loved the diversity of the people and topics under a unifying theme. I felt accepted and my disabilities were treated as normal, overall. Some of my friends from my chronic illness/disability NVC classes attended, too. (Because it’s a teleconference, I think this event is not accessible to people who are D/deaf.)

If you have difficulty attending events or classes in the flesh, due to your disabilities, location, or schedule, doing them by phone can be great. Also, it’s just an hour a day, which I find much easier than something long (which tends to drain me). Plus, you can go to as many or as few as you’d like, and you can listen to whichever of them afterward as often as you like, whether you attend or not. Also, there’s usually a pretty good mix of listening and participating, though nobody is ever forced to do anything, and my experience is one of a great deal of acceptance of whatever you’re feeling or needing.

There is also a commitment to financial access. The requested contribution (this is a fundraiser for BayNVC — many trainers are donating their time) is $60, which is for 20 calls and the recordings of all the calls. That is a pretty amazing bargain — $3 per call, not including the recordings. HOWEVER, I know many people with disabilities are struggling to get by and simply do not have $60. So, if you’ve read the info above and are thinking, “This sounds really amazing. I so wish I could go, but I don’t have $60,” please email the organizer, Mair at Mair@baynvc.org and ask her if you could attend for a contribution that you CAN afford (from $1-$59 sliding scale). She really wants it to be inclusive (and so do I, of course).

Would you like to help me out in my efforts to increase peace in the world? If so, I’d greatly appreciate any of the following actions on your part:

Sharing this post with friends, family, colleagues, and others who might want to learn about, or deepen, an NVC practice or learn about growing compassion.

Sharing this post or this link via social networking, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc., and encouraging friends and followers to register.

Gifting the telesummit to someone you believe would enjoy and benefit from it. Whether you can attend or not, you can give the gift of NVC to friends, colleagues, or loved ones by registering them for this event!

Details about the Growing Compassion telesummit are on the BayNVC website. It start soon — September 3 — so your help in getting the word out now is greatly appreciated!